November 2011 Meeting &

Plant of the Month Competition

South Africa - A Gift to the EarthLouise Bustard

The talk started with Louise, telling us that she had got a bursary to attend the Conference in South Africa. As she was the only British person going, she felt quite honored.

She flew into Cape Town, a flight which took sixteen hours. The first day she went up Table mountain and she was surprised to see how flat it was. The views and scenery were marvelous, with excellent views of the buildings in town. Later on she visited the botanical gardens.

The next day she went to Hout Bay and Seal Island, where there were ostriches with babies. This was followed by a visit to the Cape of Good Hope where she saw Jackass and mongoose. The following day she went to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens and saw Cycads that had cones on them. Then it was on to the Karoo National Botanical Gardens where there were tortoises coming out from under the plants.

The next garden to visit was the Harold Porter National Botanic Gardens in Betty's Bay on the Western Cape, this was very wet as the water table is very near the surface. Then it was time to go to Durban, which seemed to be very British. There was time to visit the Durban Botanical Gardens and the Drakensberg mountains. The last garden visited was the KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Gardens.